that guy

near my hood

 I got back to Kiev. From the train station, I decided to first go to the new apartment and try out the keys. I was in a rush to make sure I hadn't been scammed again and was given a fake set of keys while someone scored on my money. Then I was going to go back into town to get my main backpack, which I had left at the hostel, since I didn't want to drag it all around Kharkiv. When I made it back to my apartment, I met my new roommate, Chris. When I came into the apartment, he was asleep, but soon woke up. When he came to introduce himself to me, he wore a towel wrapped around his waist and a t-shirt. He was short and bald, with intense brown eyes that seemed to pop out and shake when he talked with someone – and he never talked about frivolous things. As his eyes popped, he would also lick his lips constantly, almost appearing like Heath Ledger's rendition of the Joker, just without makeup, scars and knives. He would prefer guns anyway.

I sat down and decided to try to talk with him for a bit to get to know my new neighbor. Chris was originally from the Pacific Northwest. He had searched most of his early life for a religion that he felt fit the Bible the most, going from Baptist to Pentecostal before finally setting on Catholicism. He became a very strict and traditional Catholic, even going on many Catholic missions around the world, from India to South America. Eventually, he became disillusioned to what he saw was the collapse of the Church due to liberalism and decentralization. He decided he'd look into Eastern Christianity. He went to L'vov, Ukraine, to see how the Greek Catholics were, if they were holding true to a pre-Vatican II Church. When he saw the Novus Ordo mass being practiced there, he was further disillusioned and decided to join the Russian Orthodox Church – what he saw was the most conservative of all churches (I've since tried to tell him that Georgians managed to beat the Russians in having a conservative and traditional church).

“I can't stand America anymore,” he told me. He got up to stir his pot of legumes and grains that was boiling on the stove. “It's full of degenerate mongrels. We've let our society completely collapse. I just can't stand it. I had to come here to find something better. But you know, even here, with how everyone is looking to the West, you can see the degeneration slowly creep in. Here still, though, they have family values. They don't divorce, the wives serve their husbands, you know. Children are more obedient, because you can hit them if they aren't. They stay in line. When I was teaching classes in a Catholic school in India, I was trying to keep the class calm. But they were crazy. The headmaster told me, 'Look Chris, just put a stick on your table.' So I did. And the class was calm for a few days, but then they realized I wasn't going to use the stick. A few days later, the headmaster came back in, 'Look Chris,' he said to me, 'you'll find the boy who is loudest and noisiest of them, just give him a thwack.' And I did. They shut up and paid attention the rest of the semester.”

Sipping tea, after I got my bag, he went on, “You know what another problem in America is? Mexicans. I used to think they'd have a positive influence, because they had family values. But they don't have family values anymore. They've come to America and degenerated in all the negative ways Americans have and are even worse, since they come to America and don't even try to adapt to the culture. They keep speaking their Spanish. When I worked on a farm, I'd work side by side with the Mexicans. They're hard workers. And even though I spoke Spanish, I would only speak English to them because they were in my country and they should be speaking English.”

“But you don't speak Ukrainian or Russian?” I interjected.

“That's something different entirely,” he replied. “They're in our country, wanting all of our rights and benefits, they have to learn our language.”

“Many just want to make money and go back home.”

“That might be how it used to be, but now Mexico is even more degenerate than America, with how bad all the gang violence has gotten. And they're bringing all that violence into America. We should just get rid of them all, and the ones that don't want to go should be shot.”

“I don't know, I think language is a thing of economics. I don't understand how you Republicans can preach laissez-faire on nearly everything, but when it comes to language, you puss out. Why? You can't learn another language? Whatever language is economically advantageous to speak and know, people will learn. All second generation immigrants speak English fine.”

“But they're degenerates. And they're preserving their own degenerate race when they refuse to bledn into America.” And so on.

Chris was a generally amicable guy, even though he had some pretty extreme opinions on everything, like how domestic violence wasn't the government's business, how Sharia law was good because it enforced family values and how all Socialist health care was the worst in the world though he'd only lived in England and Italy (the two countries with the worst healthcare in Europe) and that America's was the best, especially because of the malpractice lawsuits and insurance structure. Despite his opinions though, he was able to keep them at the table. He never grew violent or directly offensive, nor did he ever yell or become haughty and he always let the other person talk. But Chris could out talk anyone and would keep talking for hours after I got bored of the subject. Which was impressive, because I was normally that guy. 

near my hood, after the first snow

I had been lying low for those few days. Chris was also on a permanent state of lying low, complaining about not being able to exercise since he was in a slump, or about how he hated the growing degeneracy of the Ukrainian people. I certainly wasn't the most positive charge in the power plant, but he was a charge, that much was certain. We walked around the neighborhood a few times. Kharkivska mostly consisted of massive Soviet block apartments that looked rather barren at first site. But then I began to notice a cafe here, a bar there, a pub over there, hair salons and butchers, milk shops and fish shops.  They even had small beer shops that served some twenty different beers from keg to bottle. The place was crawling with activity – it was an unexpected surprise.